If you hate living out of your suitcase when you travel, but are also just too damn lazy to hang stuff up or fill a drawer, these Rise & Hang bags are the perfect solution to your biggest traveling gripe. The $99 Weekender bag uses the company's patented collapsible shelving system, so all you need to find is a secure place to hang it and you're instantly unpacked.

The Weekender does require a little extra planning in the packing phase, instead of just balling everything up and cramming it into your bag. But the payoff is that everything will be easy to find—and mostly unwrinkled—when you get to your destination. And as an added bonus, your clothing is less susceptible to infiltration by bed bugs and other unwanted traveling companions while it's hanging. [Rise & Hang Travel Gear via Fancy]

If you've got $38 to spare and a few weeks to wait for delivery, Brando's got a new temperature sensing travel mug that guarantees you'll never again burn your mouth on scalding hot coffee—or accidentally sip a stale brew that's gone cold.

A built-in thermometer lets the insulated mug report back how hot or cold its contents are via a two-digit LCD display on the outside. But if you can't make hide nor hare of the metric system mumbo jumbo it uses to display the temperature, the mug also has a heart on its side that glows blue, orange, or red, visually indicating how hot or cold your beverage is. Just don't expect your lawsuit against McDonald's to hold up when you're holding indisputable evidence your coffee was too hot to drink.

[Brando]

An ultra-thin wallet is the only way to avoid bulging pockets if you've opted for skintight jeans. But what good is a sleek wallet if it's next to impossible to get your cards out? That's why the Secrid wallet features an actual eject button at the bottom, forcing your credit and debit cards up so they're easy to remove from its featureless aluminum body.

The $40 Secrid can hold six cards in total, and for the stylish and paranoid types, it also blocks RFID signals stopping roaming hackers from stealing your card info. It will even prevent pickpockets from accessing your ID, assuming they've never operated an eject button before. [ThinkGeek]

Quirky might be the world leader in developing crazy kitchen contraptions, but the company that helps turn regular people's ideas into actual products focuses on other markets too. Such as educational toys that kids will actually want to play with, like the Sound Track: a brilliant mashup of a music box and a toy train that has kids playing composer, conductor, and conductor.

The Sound Track locomotive features the same tuned metal comb as a traditional music box, but instead of a spinning cylinder covered in metal spikes, the track itself features a series of adjustable bumps that produce a song as the train rolls across them. So the set helps foster an interest in music and teaches the basics of musical notation, while kids think they're just having fun. Suckers!

[Quirky]

A fancy design in the foam atop your latte can make your morning cup of coffee even more of a pick me up. But even the world's most artistically-inclined baristas can't compete with this coffee machine that prints photos, submitted by the customer, directly on their latte.

Engineered by a Taiwanese convenience store as a way to really personalize its customers' drinks—and as a clever marketing stunt to lure people away from Starbucks—the coffee printer actually kind of cheats. Most baristas will create an image on a latte by swirling and manipulating the milk foam, but this machine instead dusts the latte with an edible powder—cocoa or coffee grinds presumably—using a computer-controlled print head that results in surprisingly high quality images.

So latte art purists will probably scoff at its technique, but regular coffee fans might want to find a way to frame these on their walls.

As 3D printers become more affordable and easier to use, the prospect of using the technology to simply print whatever we need—instead of having to go to the store and buy it—is becoming tantalizingly real. One day we might even be able to quickly 3D print the ultimate investment on the cheap: a house. Unfortunately, though, as this calculator shows, we're still a long ways off from that reality.

Using the MakerBot Replicator 2 as a speed and cost reference, the folks at Movoto cooked up this handy calculator that lets you figure out how long it would take, and the price tag for printing the bricks needed to build your dream home.

As far as costs go, 3D printing a two-story, 2,000 square foot dwelling would only set you back just north of $278,000. And depending on where you live, that could be fairly reasonable. But that's relying on a single 3D printer to keep the costs down. So while the cost isn't outrageous, the 184 years needed to finish the job would probably be problematic. And one can only imagine what the safety inspectors would have to say about your plastic abode. [Movoto]

Remember Small Soldiers? It was a movie where action figures were enhanced with military technology to make them more interactive, but ultimately resulted in them coming to life. Even though it cast both Spinal Tap and actors from The Dirty Dozen as voice talent, the film was remarkably forgettable. To the point where watching this test footage of the film's special effects would have been a more enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.

Since CG was still in its expensive infancy, Stan Winston Studios was called upon to create puppet versions of the sentient action figures in the film. Controlled by rods and cables that would later be digitally removed in post production, the characters required carefully choreographed performances from the studio's puppeteers to create lifelike motions. And while the movie itself was a flop, it's nice to see that at least what went into its special effects was impressive.

Your standard alluring, boudoir-style photos usually sees someone stretched out on a bear skin rug. But if the only thing you're looking for in a partner is an obsession with Star Wars, perhaps a photo of yourself sprawled across this life-size tauntaun skin rug would serve as a better dating site profile pic.

Made by hand by master prop builder Malaki Keller, this one-of-a-kind recreation isn't for sale, which is sad because it has several benefits over gutting an actual tauntaun, the least of which being it will keep you warm without burning your nostrils with its awful stench. [Malaki Keller via Star Wars Blog]

When you're dealing with clients who will potentially be spending millions of dollars on your product, it doesn't hurt to splurge a little on your promotional items. After all, you've got to spend money to make money, so the brochure for Embraer's new Lineage 1000 private jet was designed to fly just like the aircraft itself—or float, at least.

The brochure, which looks more like a lavish coffee table book, features a magnet embedded in its back cover that repels it a few inches above an included electromagnetic base. Sent to just a select few of Embraer's more lucrative clients, the brochure's cover also features a 3D relief of the jet, to help further sell the aircraft and the idea that the company will go above and beyond for its customers. [YouTube via Taxi]

Convincing kids to sit still long enough to take their picture either takes a small army of distracting stuffed animals, or the University of Tokyo's new high-speed camera tracking system which guarantees your subject is always in frame.

Instead of moving the glass elements in a lens, or the camera's sensor which can only compensate for subtle movements, the Ishikawa Oku Lab's system uses a pair of independent high-speed mirrors that bounce the subject into the camera's lens, while at all times compensating for extreme movements in pan and tilt. Seeing it action is utterly amazing, and there's no doubt this technology could revolutionize baby photography as we know it.

[DigInfo TV]

More and more vehicles are coming equipped with emergency braking systems that can stop a car before it hits something. And as CCP realized, the same technology could be just as useful with a remote control toy. After all, you're putting an untrained, unlicensed kid in control of a small car that can seriously bang up your home's walls and furniture.

The prototypes of the company's new RC toys are being shown off at the International Tokyo Toy Show this weekend, and each include a pair of front-mounted infrared sensors that constantly monitor the distance to objects in its path. If the car is moving fast enough that there's a genuine risk of a crash, it will automatically slow down and stop, before backing up slightly so it's easy for a child to drive away. Expected to be introduced this fall, not only does the new technology help protect the toy car, it also helps keep chair legs and drywall free of dents and scratches. [Tech-on!]

Any task requiring the use of clear tape would be a lot easier if you could snatch a strip of the sticky stuff with just one hand. And while there have been many complicated contraptions that promise exactly that functionality, Black+Blum have found a simpler approach that takes advantage of that perpetual force known as gravity.

For starters, the On a Roll tape dispenser is made from cast iron, and weighs in at a hefty 2.3 pounds. So no matter how hard you pull and yank on a strip of tape, its weight and grippy rubber feet guarantee the tape will break before the dispenser budges. And further taking advantage of gravity, the angled support keeps the roll in place without requiring additional components. Simplicity is the name of the game here, and if you want a tape dispenser that could probably survive a nuclear blast, this would be $44 well spent.

[Black+Blum via MoCo Loco]

There's a very good chance that if you're a fan of Star Trek, you're also a fan of video games. And even if you didn't grow up in a time when 8-bit graphics were mind-blowing, it's still easy to love this condensed re-telling of J.J. Abram's first Star Trek movie as told via the original NES.

It's two minutes of side-scrolling, cutscene, pixelated action, and even if the sequel is already a rehash of a previous story, we'd still be happy for it to get the 8-bit treatment too. [YouTube via Laughing Squid]

Children are impossible to please, no matter now many Lunchables you ply them with. But even the most ungrateful tykes will appreciate getting one of Mores stunning Petitpierre kids bikes crafted from carbon fiber so they're easier to ride and maneuver.

Featuring everything from built-in LED safety lights, to a clever footrest built into the frame for kids just learning to ride, the bike's curvy design gives it a lower center of gravity which makes mastering the two-wheel balancing act a little easier. And at just under seven pounds kids can easily lift it over curbs or other obstacles they're too small to tackle.

The only catch? A $2,000 price tag that will probably have parents refusing to let their kids actually ride the Petitpierre so that it can be handed down for generations.

[Mores-Design via designboom]

People with a fear of social situations are often labeled as loners and ostracized, but in reality social phobias are incredibly common. For example, how many of us get anxious about speaking in front of a large crowd? And to help people over come these fears, researchers at MIT have developed an interactive program that coaches people through social interactions, which boosts their confidence.

The MACH—or My Automated Conversation coacH—software uses a computer generated onscreen persona that people with social phobias learn to interact with. A video camera constantly monitors the person's movements and facial expressions, while behavior analysis software determines how well they did in a conversation based on eye contact and reactions.

Feedback is provided on how the user can improve their social interactions, and since there's no fear of the on-screen simulation making fun of them, or reacting awkwardly to something they've said, it helps build and reinforce the confidence needed to tackle real world social interactions with ease.

If you happen to find yourself taking an evening stroll past 15th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan tomorrow night, you'll have the opportunity to full enjoy this clever Corona billboard. Playing off the fact the drink is usually served with a lime wedged in the bottle's mouth, from the right angle, and on the right night, a crescent moon fills in for the missing fruit.

It's a little odd to think that the idea for the ad really only pays off once in a blue moon—in a manner of speaking—but there's no doubt it draws a big crowd on the night when everything perfectly aligns.

[YouTube via Taxi]

It doesn't matter how many hours you wiled away at college in the rec room, this air hockey-playing robot, developed by researchers at Chiba University's Namiki Lab, will beat you. And not only will it never lose, the robot has also been taught how to string along its human opponent so they think they have a chance at winning, when in reality they don't.

The robot's four-axis arm is assisted by a pair of high-speed cameras that continuously track the trajectory of the puck, guaranteeing a human opponent will never be fast enough to score. But what's particularly depressing for humans is that while this robot would have no trouble absolutely dominating a game, it's actually programmed to study its opponents' playing style and compete in a way that keeps them wanting to play.

In other words, the robot's also playing a psychological game, stringing its human opponent along, letting them think they have a chance of winning when in reality they do not. So as impressive as its air hockey playing skills are, the real breakthrough here is the development of what could be the world's first artificial hustling intelligence. [Nakimi Laboratory via IEEE Spectrum]